The Terrace Hanalei (Upstairs) — Restaurant in Kauai

I’d like to give The Terrace Hanalei 3.5 stars, but I’m rounding up because they’re still under new management, and I have high hopes they’re working out some kinks:

Four of us stopped in here, a follow up from two years ago when it was a different name/owner/menu. We’d heard good things from some locals, so we decided to give it a try.

On the positive side, there aren’t many places with as beautiful and fun location than The Terrace. The windows offer a stunning view of the mountains overlooking Hanalei, and even at night you can look out at the tourists shopping.

We ordered two salmon bowls, the salmon pasta, and the fish and chips. The salmon bowls were delicious, and the fish and chips were very tasty. Not traditional British fish and chips, but still yummy.

On the negative side, we didn’t finish the salmon pasta. It was $11 more than the salmon bowl, but had a smaller piece of salmon. And the cream sauce seemed entirely devoid of seasoning. Plenty of cream, and a little garlic - that’s it. After the other three great dishes, I assume this came out of the kitchen wrong.

Finally, the service was slow and disjointed. This is not the fault of the servers - they were friendly and active and running around all night. The problem was there were only two of them for the entire restaurant. Our food came out before the two cocktails we ordered, so we got to start on them half way through our dinner.

Stop in and give it a try. This post is just a few months after new management has taken over, and I’m sure the next time we dine there it will be...

Crab cakes and the short rib were great. The wife’s ahi had an extremely sweet sauce all over it, ruined the dish. She tried to eat it because she doesn’t like to waste food and then gave up. Couldn’t scrape enough of the sauce off to make it edible. She did not eat a lot of the dish before sending it away. Ended up sharing my short rib with her. Luckily it was a lot of food and quite good.

We were still charged for the $39 ahi dish, I told the server I don’t think we should have to pay for it as it was bad and she didn’t eat much of it. Server offered ten percent discount on the dish. He said because she ate more than half they can’t do any more, we had already sent the food away, she didn’t eat half, what am I supposed to do argue with the server over if she ate half of the food she didn’t like? I asked to speak with the manager and after the server checked with the manager, I was told they were too busy to speak with me and offered twenty percent off of the dish.

Im not here to haggle, im here to have a nice experience, and as a business you either want to get it right or you don’t. Ive worked as a server and I get people try to get food comped, take advantage, etc, but that was not the case here. I told the server to charge me full price, you either make it right or you don’t, and they didn’t. Gave the server Cameron...

We visited the terrace twice in a week and had a mixed experience.

We went there the first time and enjoyed our meal even though the service was slow due to understaffing.

We went a second time within the same week and there was shrinkflation since our previous visit.

Both times, we ordered two of the same items: the fish and chips, and the terrace salad. After our food arrived, we asked about the kimchi included on the menu with the fish and chips. We were informed that the fish and chips no longer came with it, and the menu wasn’t up to date. In addition, the terrace salad came with one half of a heart of romaine, rather than the full heart we got the first time, for the same price of $17!! They don't add much except for some tiny cubed tomatoes, avocado, olives and cheese. However, up the road you can get a romaine heart for $4 at the Foodland. We spent over $250 for two people at this restaurant and left deflated because we felt cheated, compared to our first encounter.

See pictures below, the first two are from Thursday and the second two are from the...